What an amazing experience! I had been looking forward to this ride for over a year and it lived up to all my expectations.

Before I get into a review of the ride, I want to give out a special "Thanks" to Jim and Sheryl for letting me stay at there place the night before the race. With no Hotel/Motel rooms available in the area, I jumped on the HH100 site a couple nights before the race to see about alternative lodging. That's when I noticed a blurb about "Host Homes". Basically the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce matches up bed-less riders with generous locals who are offering up rooms in there homes. I called the WFCC and they gave me several number and names with descriptions of the living situations.... no cats, 1 bed, will cook breakfast, ect…..

My needs were pretty basic. I needed a room with a bed and a shower! When I called the first number on my list, the lady offering the room informed me that she had already given the room to someone else, but she had some friends that had a room and would forward them my number. A short time later Jim called and said he had a room available. So I accepted.

I arrived at Wichita Falls at around 5pm and headed straight to the registration area. There I meet up with Nathan, Tracy, Danny, Michelle and Phil. We wandered around the area briefly, split up and made plans to meet up later for dinner. So, I made my way to Jim and Sheryl's home to get settled in.

I can’t say enough about the "Host Home" program, Jim and Sheryl were very accommodating and just are the nicest people you'd ever want to meet. They had a beautiful home, which was fairly close to the Start/Finish, and made my stay as pleasant as possible.


The Ride

I woke up at 5am, on the morning of the ride, gathered my things and made my way to the hotel were Nathan and the clan were staying. We got the bikes ready hooked up with Eric and made our way close to the front....... we were about a block from the Starting line.

The ride started at 7:04am. The first 15 minutes were slow as expected, it takes a while to get 9000+ cyclists spread out and up to speed..... Luckily we were up front. I heard it was 30 to 45 minute wait for those towards to back of the pack.

A little over a mile in, things weren't looking too good for me. Just as we were picking up speed, I shifted to my big ring and dropped the chain. I pulled to the side of the road, quickly fixed the chain and caught up with Eric. At about the 17 mile mark we came across a pretty bad accident, there were about 5 riders down, all being attended to by emergency personnel. Not long after that we came across another with two guys down in the middle of the road about halfway up a hill. This one wasn't serious, just a pain in the ass to maneuver around.

From there we just cruised to the 100 Mile/100K split. At this point Eric and I had a killer pace going and were riding 2 abreast when Eric notice a couple riders on our wheels...... a few minutes later there were ever more. We had a nice size pace line going. It held together for about 6 miles, but it fell apart once we hit Electra. Half of the riders in our pace line stopped at the rest stop and the rest apparently had no desire to lead the group. It was fun while it lasted but neither Eric nor I wanted to pull that group around much longer.... no one wanted to share the work and we didn't want to wear ourselves out.

At about 40 miles in we finally caught up with the small storm we had been watching most of the morning. It showered us with some bone chilling rain for about five miles and produced the occasional lightning bolt, which was a bit unnerving.

At 50 miles we stopped at our first rest stop. As we were rifling thought the normal assortment of fruit and cookies, when we saw a guy in the back serving grilled Hot Dogs and Sausages. They were available on either Bun or Tortilla...... we had two dogs a piece, a few more cookies, then hopped back on our bikes. We made it though Hell's Gate (Mile 60) at about 10:20am, 2 hours before it closed. I was felling remarkably well and was surprised to see that our Ave. MPH had jumped to 19.3.

Just past Hells gate, we started looking for the Hills that everyone had been talking about. We were told they were just beyond Hell's gate at about mile 64. At one point a guy came along side of me and asked whether the bump in the road just ahead of us was "Hell's Hill".... After I told him I didn't know, He hap-hazard’ly flung himself down on his aero bars pulled ahead of me. About 2 minutes later Eric and I blew past him as he struggle to climbed, what seems to us (and most everybody else) to be a slight incline at most. About 20 miles later we were trying to figure out just were these "Hills" were.

The next stop we made was at about 75 miles, we stop quickly, refueled and cool off a bit. We then decided we would make one more stop at 90 miles and hopefully finish in good time. The ride to the 90 mile rest stop was pretty uneventful we just trudged along and counted down the miles until the finish. At the 90 mile stop I noticed that the crowds had really thinned out.

The next ten miles were great. As we were leaving the hwy 79 and heading up to the finish into downtown WF, we notice a makeshift rest stop with guys passing out free beer. As much a I wanted to stop, I decided to pass it up and just finish the ride.... besides, the beer was being served in open cups, I probably would have spilled more than I would have drank.

It was really cool coming down the last half mile, with the road blocked off, crowds of people lining the street cheering each of us on as we approached the finish line. It was also cool to see Nathan and Burt waiting at the finish line as we crossed.....

103 miles in 5 hours and 26 minutes with an average speed of 18.9mph. Almost 2 mph faster than I had hoped to do it in.

The people of Wichita Falls, Iowa Park, Electra and Burkburnett were out in force all along the route. It was by far the most enjoyable ride of the year..... People along street waving and the kid’s high-five’ing the cyclist as we pasted. They are the reason so many people make trip to WF’s ride this event year after year...... and the reason I won’t miss another!

I had a freaking blast!!